Other fabulous accounts of the origin of this mystic name, which opens the heart and hand of the savage more readily than that of gold, trace it to Tabacco, a province of Yucatan in New Spain, whence it is stated to have been first brought to Europe. Or affinity is claimed for it with the Island of Tobago, one of the Caribbees, where it grew wild in abundance. Or its derivation is traced to Tobasco, in the island of Florida. In Mexico it was called _yetl_, and in Peru _sagri_, meaning in those languages “the herb,” or the herb _par excellence_, worthy of superiority over all other herbs which the earth ever produced from her bosom. It seems surprising that a vegetable production so universally spread should have different names among neighbouring people. In North America the Algonkin name is _sema_, and the Huron _oyngoua_, and the same dissimilarity exists in the languages of South-American tribes; the Omagua, _petema_; the Maypure, _jema_; the Chiquito, _pâis_; the Vilela, _tusup_; and the Tamanac, _cavai_. One would have expected to have found names with less variation among such neighbours. It might be urged, perhaps, that these are all independent ancient names given by each tribe to the plant before they became acquainted with the existence of their neighbours, and an evidence that its use was not derived from each other, nor from travellers passing among them. To these speculations the theorist is welcome. There is little reason to doubt that tobacco is a plant indigenous to the New World. With the era, therefore, of Columbus, our knowledge of it will necessarily commence. When the Spaniards landed with that navigator in Cuba in 1492, they found the Cubans doing the same kind of thing as the voyager would now find them occupied in, making and smoking cigars. In the latter act, these Spaniards soon followed the Cuban example, as did those also who landed in 1518, with Fernando Cortez, in the island of Tobago, to a still greater extent. The honour of introducing this, the fairest of “the Seven Sisters of Sleep,” to European society and soil, is due, perhaps, to Hernandez, the naturalist, who brought the first seeds from Mexico (Humboldt states, from the Mexican province of Yucatan), in 1559, and conveyed them to Spain. About the same time some unknown Flamingo introduced the illustrious visitor to Portugal. Of the introduction of tobacco into France, the more commonly-received opinion is, that the first seeds were sent to Catherine de Medici from Portugal in 1560, by Jean Nicot, the French ambassador to that country, and ever since it has borne as its generic name a memento of its patron. Other accounts attribute to Father André Thevet, or some friend of his, the honour of introducing the raw material to the most accomplished snuff-takers in Europe, and, perhaps, the first who ever indulged in it to any extent.